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There are competing theories about the origins of the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. One theory proposes that it was developed in Frisia and from there spread later to England. Another holds that runes were first introduced to England from Scandinavia where the futhorc was modified and then exported to Frisia. Both theories have their inherent weaknesses, and a definitive answer may come from further archaeological evidence.

The early futhorc was identical to the Elder Futhark, except for the split of ᚨa into three variants ᚪāc, ᚫæsc and ᚩōs, resulting in 26 runes. This was necessary to account for the new phoneme produced by the Ingvaeonic split of allophones of long and short a. The earliest ᚩōs rune is found on the 5th-century Undley bracteate. ᚪāc was introduced later, in the 6th century. The double-barred ᚻhægl characteristic of continental inscriptions is first attested as late as 698, on St Cuthbert's coffin; before that, the single-barred Scandinavian variant was used.

In England, the futhorc was further extended to 28 and finally to 33 runes, and runic writing in England became closely associated with the Latin scriptoria from the time of Anglo-Saxon Christianization in the 7th century. The futhorc started to be replaced by the Latin alphabet from around the 7th century, but it was still sometimes used up until the 10th or 11th century. In some cases, texts would be written in the Latin alphabet, but runes would be used logographically in place of the word it represented, and þorn and wynn came to be used as extensions of the Latin alphabet. By the Norman Conquest of 1066, it was very rare and disappeared altogether shortly thereafter. From at least five centuries of use, fewer than 200 artefacts bearing futhorc inscriptions have survived.

Several famous English examples mix runes and Roman script, or Old English and Latin, on the same object, including the Franks Casket and St Cuthbert's coffin; in the latter, three of the names of the Four Evangelists are given in Latin written in runes, but "LUKAS" (Saint Luke) is in Roman script. The coffin is also an example of an object created at the heart of the Anglo-Saxon church that uses runes. A leading expert, Raymond Ian Page, rejects the assumption often made in non-scholarly literature that runes were especially associated in post-conversion Anglo-Saxon England with Anglo-Saxon paganism or magic.[2]

The first 24 of these directly continue the Elder Futhark letters, extended by five additional runes, representing additional vowels (á, æ, ý, ia, ea), comparable to the five forfeda of the ogham alphabet.

Thorn and wynn were introduced into the English version of the Latin alphabet to represent /θ/ and /w/, but they were replaced with th and w in the Middle English period.

The letter sequence, and indeed the letter inventory is not fixed. Compared to the letters of the rune poem given above,

f u þ o r c ȝ w h n i j eo p x s t b e m l ŋ œ d a æ y io ea

the Thames scramasax has 28 letters, with a slightly different order, and eðel missing:

f u þ o r c ȝ w h n i io eo p x s t b e ŋ d l m j a æ y ea

The Vienna Codex also has 28 letters; the Ruthwell Cross inscription has 31 letters; Cotton Domitian A.ix (11th century) has 33 letters, with the four following additional runes:

In the manuscript, the runes are arranged in three rows, glossed with Latin equivalents below (in the third row above) and with their names above (in the third row below). The manuscript has traces of corrections by a 16th-century hand, inverting the position of m and d. Eolh is mistakenly labelled as sigel, and in place of sigel, there is a kaun-like letter ᚴ, corrected to proper sigel ᛋ above it. Eoh is mislabelled as eþel. Apart from ing and ear, all rune names are due to the later scribe, identified as Robert Talbot (died 1558).

The 9th-century Codex Sangallensis 878 (attributed to Walahfrid Strabo) records an abecedarium anguliscum in three lines. The first two lines list the standard 29 runes, i.e. the 24 derived from Elder Futhark, and the five standard additional ones (á, æ, ý, io, ea). The listing order of the final two of the "elder" 24 runes is dæg, éðel. A peculiarity is the "asterisk" shape of eolh. The third line lists gar and kalc(?) before a doodling repetition of other runes.

Futhorc series on the Seax of Beagnoth (9th century). The series has 28 runes, omitting io. The shapes of j, s, d, œ and y deviate from the standard forms shown above; eo appears mirrored.

The Old English and Old Frisian Runic Inscriptions database project at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany aims at collecting the genuine corpus of Old English inscriptions containing more than two runes in its paper edition, while the electronic edition aims at including both genuine and doubtful inscriptions down to single-rune inscriptions.

Runic finds in England cluster along the east coast with a few finds scattered further inland in Southern England. Frisian finds cluster in West Frisia. Looijenga (1997) lists 23 English (including two 7th-century Christian inscriptions) and 21 Frisian inscriptions predating the 9th century.

Odenstedt, Bengt, On the Origin and Early History of the Runic Script, Uppsala (1990), ISBN91-85352-20-9; chapter 20: 'The position of continental and Anglo-Frisian runic forms in the history of the older futhark '

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